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Xilinx, Inc. is an american company specialized in the programmable logical .

It designs and markets programmable logical circuits, the associated development tools and ancillary services (like the formation and the expertise).

History

Foundation

Xilinx was founded in 1984 by three former employees of Zilog: Ross Freeman ; Bernie Vonderschmitt and Jim Barnett, with like objective marketing an electronics component based on a new concept: FPGA.

Although located in the Silicon Valley, the company chose not to invest in its own foundry, but contrary to entrusting the stage of manufacture of its components to partners. This model of operation, called Fabless, was largely democratized since.

Development

The company marketed its first product in 1985, FPGA XC2064. Two years later, it opened sales offices in Europe and in Japan. In 1990, Xilinx is placed on the stock market, and carries out in 2000 a sales turnover exceeding the billion dollar.

Acquisitions

During its development, Xilinx repurchased various companies:

AccelChip: January 13rd, 2006
Yesterday Design: June 7th, 2004
Triscend: March 8th, 2004
RocketChips: October 3rd, 2000
Veriphia: September 21st, 2000
LavaLogic: July 10th, 2000
Integral Design: July 6th, 2000
Visual Software Solutions: November 2nd, 2000

Implentation

In 2007 the company has centers and offices in 20 countries.

Products

Component logical programmable

The commercial offer of Xilinx is cut out in several ranges:

FPGA high efficiencies: range Virtex
FPGA for mass production: range Spartan
CPLD: ranges XC9500 and Coolrunner

High FPGA performces

This type of FPGA is targeted for applications to strong value added:

Networks and telecommunications (Routing of dorsal)
Video-numerical (visual effects, encoding,…)
Digital processing of the signal
Emulation of ASIC
Modulation/implemented Demodulation in a software way ( Defined Software Radio operator )

Classification of the Virtex range by chronological order:

Virtex: announced in November 1998
Virtex-II: announced on January 15th, 2001
Virtex-II Pro: announced on March 4th, 2002
Virtex-4: announced on September 13rd, 2004
Virtex-5: announced on May 15th, 2006

The first generation of Virtex introduced the integration of memory double-port DPRAM and loops with locking of time (DLL) directly within the matrix of the FPGA.

The generation following brought, in addition to one increase in the performances and the logical capacities, of the dedicated multiplieurs (coded " in dur" in the matrix of the FPGA), then a PowerPC processor and transceivers series multi-gigabit (allowing to directly support the Gigabit Ethernet, and more recently the NCV-Express train as well as the Serial ATA). The dedicated multiplieurs then became of blocks DSP dedicated to whole share.

FPGA of great series

CPLD

Xilinx proposes the ranges XC9500, CoolRunner repurchased with Philips Semiconductors in 1999.

Development tools

Xilinx markets a whole range of development tools to exploit its components.

The principal tools are:

Xilinx ISE : Environment of development integrated
Xilinx EDK: Environment of integrated development targeting the processors integrated into the FPGA
Xilinx ChipScope Pro: Tool of déboguage time-reality of FPGA

Technologies

Xilinx manufactures a broad range of FPGA and CPLD for various applications. Most expensive are the FPGA of the family of the Virtex (Virtex II/pro, Virtex 4 and virtex 5). The Virtex II Pro Virtex 4 and Virtex 5 are very powerful thanks to the presence of a PowerPC 405 one-chip , i.e. directly included within the FPGA. They can consequently contain operating systems embarked like Linux and work with the logic implemented in the FPGA.

The CPLD are cheaper ( Coolrunner I/II ) but are limited much. Still let us quote the FPGA of the family Spartan which are halfway in term of complexity. Xilinx also sells specifications of architectures (" IP Cores"). That can go from very simple functions as of the meters until complete systems as of the Microcontrôleur S. Xilinx is also at the origin of the Processeur softcore Microblaze.

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